Mincemeat

November 14, 2016
Italian chef and consultant Lucarelli has worked in kitchens ranging from holes in the wall to chic Michelin-starred eateries. Though he doesn’t revisit all of them, he gives readers a glimpse at the day-to-day lives of those working the line under harsh conditions. It’s a story that’s been told, and told better, many times before. Lucarelli’s tale includes lots of drugs, cops, lurid sex, busy nights, short fuses, and high stakes. He offers insight into what it really takes to not only become a chef but sustain a career, in addition to moments of solipsistic reflection. The urge to compare the book to Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential is inevitable, and under that scrutiny Lucarelli’s work falls far short. His themes are similar to Bourdain’s, but his book is a lesser version of the same story. Lucarelli, though a talented writer, doesn’t have the same bravado and chutzpah. Those in the restaurant and hospitality industry will likely recognize themselves in some of the book’s vignettes.

October 15, 2016
An Italian chef's no-holds-barred memoir of his love-hate relationship with cooking and the cutthroat world of restaurant cuisine.The India-born son of "Italian hippies," Lucarelli stumbled into his profession at age 19 when he told Sandro, a man who had just lost his sous-chef, that he knew "how to cook a little." His experience was greater than Lucarelli let on: at home, his father had shown him how to turn "cooking into pleasure." Though an impoverished university student in Rome at the time, he began to work in the kitchen; the author's adroitness as a shoplifter allowed him to buy expensive foods he used for culinary experiments popular among his friends. Lucarelli never intended on making cooking a career, but the next job that followed--for which he submitted a resume "jam-packed with blatant lies"--was also in the kitchen. As he moved from restaurant to restaurant in Rome and northern Italy, he quickly learned that while the food business never guaranteed security, it also never lacked for colorful characters, such as bosses who could never be trusted to pay on time (or even at all) and co-workers "with troubled pasts and present lives wasted by drugs and alcohol." In between screaming at other chefs, finding and losing jobs, dating sleazy waitresses, drinking, and doing drugs, Lucarelli also learned how to set up and organize restaurant kitchens and menus. Yet rather than continue to follow the tortured and chaotic path to culinary stardom, he fell in love with a "very shy girl" named Giuliana. Together, they had a son, who taught Lucarelli that the most meaningful life emphasized family over the pursuit of egoistical pleasures like opening his own restaurant and relentlessly running after Michelin star-glory. Wise and often very funny, the book offers sumptuous glimpses into human foibles and provides readers an unforgettable taste of the unabashedly sordid realities that underlie the high-gloss world of Italian cuisine. A wickedly candid memoir.

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November 15, 2016
Not all chefs spring from the world's culinary academies. Some stumble into the profession through accident or good fortune and then discover that they have a talent not only for putting good food on customers' plates but also for succeeding in the daunting, chaotic world of the restaurant kitchen. Such has been the career of Lucarelli, who debuted in Rome as a waiter solely to garner a few euros. Or so he thought. He soon found himself in the kitchen and started cooking, learning fast from chefs who put up with his high jinks, his drug use, and his womanizing. He gained enough experience to sign on to cook in a restaurant that's in fact a boat anchored in the Tiber. Despite catastrophes as he learned to deal with impossible demands of both chefs and patrons, Lucarelli discovered he actually enjoyed the chef's life. Translated from the Italian, Lucarelli's culinary autobiography moves at breakneck speed, just like his kitchen.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)